Giving an Account of her Brother's criminal Amour, and her own Passion for the handsome Hermit.

I. LETTER I.

COULD your importunity have prevailed with my brother to have left me in London, you had been free from the vexation that I shall certainly give you, by making you the confident of all my country adventures; and I hope you will relieve my chagrin, by telling me what the dear, bewitching, busy world is doing, while I am idly sauntering away my time in rural shades. How happy are you, my dear Aurelia! How I envy you the enjoyment of dust, of crouds and noise, with all the polite hurry of the beau-monde !

My brother brought me hither to see a country-seat he has lately purchased. He would fain persuade me it is finely situated; but I should think it more finely situated in the Mall, or even in Cheapside, than here. Indeed I hardly know where we are only that it is at a dreadful distance from the Theatre-Royal in DruryLane, from the Opera, from the masquerade, and every thing in this world that is worth living for.

I can scarce tell you whither to direct your letters•— We are certainly at the ends of the earth, on the borders of the continent, the limits of the habitable globe, under the polar star, among wild people and savages. I thought we should never have come to the end of our pilgrimage; nor could I forbear asking my brother, if we were to travel by dry land to the Antipodes. Not a mile but seemed ten, that carried me from London, the centre of all my joys.

The country is my aversion; I hate trees and hedges, steep hills, and silent valleys. The satyrist may laugh,

but to me,

Green fields, and shady groves, and chrystal springs,
And larks, and nightingales, are odious things.

I had rather hear London cries, with the rattle of coaches, than sit listening to the melancholy murmur of purling brooks, or all the wild music of the woods. The smell of violets gives me the hysterics; fresh air murders me; my constitution is not robust enough to bear it; the cooling zephyrs will fan me into a catarrh, if I stay here much longer.

If these are seats of the muses, let them unenvied enjoy their glittering whimsies, and converse with the visionary beings of their own forming. I have no fancy for dryades and fairies, nor the least prejudice to human society; a mere earthly beau, with an embroi dered coat, suits my taste better than an aerial lover with his shining tresses, and rainbow wings.

The sober twilight, which has employed so many soft descriptions, is with me a very dull period; nor does the moon (on which the poets dote) with all her starry train, delight me half so much as an assembly room, illuminated with wax candles. This is what I should prefer to the glaring sun in his meridian splendour.Day-light makes me sick; it has something in it so come mon and vulgar, that it seems fitter for peasants to make hay in, or country-lasses to spin by, than for the use of people of distinction.

You, pity me, I know, dear Aurelia, in this deplora. ble state. The whole creation is a blank to me, it is all joyless and desolate. In whatever gay images the muses have dressed these rustic abodes, I have not penetration enough to discover them: not the flowery field, nor spangled sky, the rosy morn, or balmy evening, can rés create my thoughts. I am neither a religious nor a pos etical enthusiast; and without either of these qualifica tions, what should I do in silent retreats and pensive shades.?

Bb

I find myself little at ease in this absence of the noisy diversions of the town. It is hard for me to keep up my spirits in leisure and retirement. It makes me anxiously inquisitive what will become of me when my breath flies away. Death, that ghastly phantom, perpetually intrudes on my solitude; and, in some doleful knell from a neighbouring steeple, often calls upon me. to ruminate on coffins and funerals, graves, and gloomy sepulchres. These dismal subjects put me in the vapours, and make me start at my own shadow; nor have I acquired any great degree of fortitude by turning freethinker, and unlearning

All that the nurse, and all the priest have taught.'

POPE.

You have been too often of our party, not to know my brother is a very infidel. He has a sort of vanity in making me a proselyte, and freeing my mind from those prejudices (as he calls them) and superstitious notions, which govern a great part of the world. But as he finds me a little unwilling to resign my immortality, he has furnished me with a system of transmigration, and the eternal wandering of the soul from one species of being to another.

However, I do not find myself a gainer by renouncing my creed, which allowed me to hope, that after the period of this mortal life, I might be an angel, or at least equal to these bright essences.

But by this fantastic scheme, to which my brother is making me a convert, my pretensions are sunk: the utmost I can expect, when I have shifted my present existence, is, to grin in a monkey, or look demure in a broad-faced owl, or to sit a chattering mag-pye in a bush. It is a chance among which of the animal race I am to be numbered; whether I shall mount the air with the winged inhabitant, or crawl on the earth among my brother reptiles, or graze in the meadows with the horned tribe. Indeed I have no great stomach to grass or hay, and as little inclination to sleep in a den, or stretch my hairy bulk on the dewy plain; but as it is yet uncertain whether I am to stalk, or fly, or swim, I am still at a

loss which of these various clans to greet as my next kindred.

However, I am better pleased with being what I am, than any thing else. I had rather be a celebrated toast, fluttering at a ball among beaux and pretty fellows, than the most gaudy butterfly hovering with painted wings over a bed of tulips. If this should be my ensuing fate, it will be a mortifying descent from a goddess to an in

sect.

And really there is something so gloomy and uncomfortable in those prospects of futurity, that if I consider them much longer, I shall turn Christian again, in defi ance of my brother, and a learned unbeliever his companion, who are perpetually ridiculing my concern about a visionary hereafter, as they term it.

Indeed this would be the least of my cares, were I not extremely at leisure; but as I am, it is impossible for me to avoid being solicitous what fate attends me when I resign this transitory life: for I must certainly die; I am mortal beyond all contradiction; this truth sits heavy on my soul; there is no flying its evidence, nor does this place afford any amusement to divert the gloomy reflection. If I should turn devotee, you would think it a more wonderful metamorphosis than any I have named. But in all changes I am constantly

Yours, &c.

LAURA.

P. S. I have a secret to tell you concerning my brother, which you shall know in my next letter; for I am as impatient to discover it, as you can be to hear it.

LETTER 11.

I HAVE too much confidence in my dear Aurelia, to conceal any thing from her; nor can it be an injury to my brother to trust you with his character, and know him to be as great a libertine in his practice as his principles.

But in whatever freedoms he has indulged himself, I

must own he has always endeavoured to give me a just sense of honour, and the decorum due to my sex. While he has taken pains to free me from the restraints of religion, he has left nothing unsaid on other motives, that might raise in me the tenderest concern for a clear reputation. Which made me the more resent his scandalous conduct, when I found he had a mistress in his house, whom he had sent hither two or three days before we came. I knew not what to do, or how to behave myself in this exigence, till I found she was rather an object of compassion than reproach; and that she came hither, not to indulge an infamous amour, but to shelter herself from want, and the resentment of her relations.

She told me the story of her misfortunes, as well as the distress and confusion she was in would permit; and asking me a thousand pardons, ingenuously owned, she had engaged my brother to bring me with him, or not to follow her.

I found her education had been strictly modest, and that she was unacquainted with the vicious part of the world. She is hardly sixteen; her name is Charlotte; the only child of a noted citizen, who was utterly ruined in his affairs by a crafty Jew. From the height of credit, the unhappy man found himself sunk into circumstances of disgrace and indigence.

This was a melancholy turn to Charlotte; just in the vanity of youthful expectations, to find herself, from the affluence of fortune so suddenly reduced to poverty and contempt. My brother (whom she had sometimes seen with her father, but knew nothing of his character) took this unfortunate crisis to tempt her with rich presents, and fair promises, to leave her friends, and retire to some private lodgings he had got for her,

In this distraction of affairs, her father being under an arrest, and all his effects seized, she was surprised into a compliance with my brother's proposal: nor did he give her time to reflect, or consult any of her relations; who soon got intelligence of this dishonour, and sent her a severe injunction to see their faces no more.